Today: 234 words
Total: 17,577 words

Yeah, yeah, I know. But it’s Saturday, I’ve spent the entire bloody day putting stuff away and fixing stuff in addition to doing the regular shopping, laundry, cooking, and cleaning.

Not to mention the little adventure I had today. I was sitting at the laptop working when I looked up and saw a little white poodle in a blue harness trotting across my front lawn. I waited, but there was no human following with a leash.

Well, crap. We don’t usually have dogs running around unleashed here—if they are, it means they’re lost or they’ve gotten out of their yards. Plus we have coyotes and bobcats (and some large raptors) who would look at that poodle and think, “Mmm, lunch.”

So No-Bra Muggins here headed out the door barefooted to try and grab the damn dog before it could trot out onto Hedgcoxe and get hit. By the time I got to the sidewalk it was only a few houses away from that very busy street and was having a merry old time sniffing bushes, running up to various houses, and blithely ignoring my claps and calls (since I can’t whistle with a numb lip).

As I inched closer an SUV pulled up and my heart went into my throat as the dog darted towards it. A woman got out and I explained that I saw the dog running around and was trying to capture it.

She replied, “Oh, that’s my dog. Someone must have let it get out the door.”

I figured “good enough” and headed back home so that the dog wasn’t scared by me and she could grab it. Anyway, good deed done for the day, I now know where that white poodle lives in case of future escapes, and I got some fresh air. But I didn’t make word count for the day as a result. Never mind. I’ll just have to hit it hard tomorrow and make up for lost time then.

Today: 1,699 words
Total: 17,344 words

We are slowly but surely creeping up towards the midpoint of the book and the main action. Which will, of course, be a battle scene because I write romantasy and like to have battle scenes in my books. Ahem.

In other news, I am married to an enabler. That’s all there is to it. Ramón claims that he isn’t, of course, but when he sees me crocheting a TARDIS beanie for my BFF and says, “You know, if you want to be a completist, that needs a flashing light on top.” And then when I google and find miniature battery operated flashing lights that can be clipped to things, well…

No, I’m not putting a flashing light on this thing. Unless I make one for myself. I do have enough yarn left over to do that, hmm…

Today: 1,693 words
Total: 15,644 words

And lo, the temperature dropped as I thought it would, plus we had a day-long rain. In light of this I thought that tonight would be a nice night for bangers and mash (or as Ramón calls it, “The food of my people”). I already had bottled brown gravy, onions, and a packet of instant mash at home so I headed over to my butcher’s to get the sausages (and some eggs)…

…and spotted a box full of lush, fat russet potatoes. I use instant mash for the convenience but it’s dreadfully salty, so I thought, “What the hey, just make some homemade mash” and grabbed three potatoes.

That, dear reader, was my first mistake.

My second mistake was thinking I could boil these taters in my large saucepan. Hahahahaha. After gazing at the mound of chopped up potatoes on my cutting board I put the large saucepan away and got out the soup pot. The potatoes alone filled it over halfway full, which led me to realize that my two quart kitchen bowl (which is usually what I prepare instant mash in) was not going to be nearly large enough to hold this amount of cooked potatoes plus the cup of rosemary/thyme/butter infused milk simmering next to the soup pot.

The two quart bowl went back into the cabinet and out came my four quart bowl. I put the cooked potatoes in there, added the infused milk, used a chopper to chop down the potatoes before switching to my hand mixer, and lo, I had about four quarts of mashed potatoes. For two people.

But they were delicious. Fluffy, creamy, redolent of rosemary and thyme, and not over-salted at all. And they went beautifully with the bangers and onion gravy. We currently have a smidge under three quarts left in the fridge and Ramón will lower that level when he has the leftover sausages and gravy tomorrow, but that’s still gonna leave a lot of mashed potatoes. Looks like I’m making cottage pie tomorrow night.

Today: 1,680 words
Total: 12,270 words

With yesterday’s realization, I decided to go back in the story and fix some stuff to reflect Rian’s fleshed out backstory. Which is usually not a good idea at this point in the writing process but I knew for a face that if I didn’t do it now I’d forget about it later even if I created a detailed note. Better to lose some time now and fix what needs to be fixed than leave it for later and have it create a giant plot hole.

Apropos of nothing, there’s a type of oral stitching filament that only dissolves once it’s covered with flesh. Three guesses what type I have? On the plus side an advancing bit of healing gum tissue has already swallowed one stitch tail so hopefully the damn thing is dissolving. But still, it’s annoying to have what feels like a row of little filaments down the length of my jawbone.

Today: 1,867 words
Total: 5,286 words

Just crossed the 10% milestone and cranked out a good solid scene between two of the villains that should help hint at what’s to come, heh, heh, heh.

One of the nice things about realizing that I write romantasy rather than pure romance is that I no longer feel bad about writing these kind of scenes. Before, I used to have a certain amount of guilt for taking the focus away from the main romantic grouping and their love story even for a while. But now that I’ve accepted that my stories aren’t pure romance (and my loyal readers like that, bless all of you), it’s a lot easier to add scenes that drive the story from non-MC characters’ viewpoints and do some world building along the way.

Basically, I like to think of it as slice-of-life scenes from my MC’s points of view that round out their lives and help show what drives them as they fall in love with each other. Maybe this has something to do with my tendency to eavesdrop, I dunno.

And today is Friday, which means I have a challenging weekend ahead of mixing writing with cleaning. As I mentioned earlier I have family coming on the first of December and we haven’t had any guests since 2020 so, yeah, the place desperately needs a deep clean. But the nice thing is, once they’ve come and gone I’ll have a clean (and ideally decorated) house for December and can kick back and enjoy the holidays.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll be spending December frantically working on Hurricane Warning and trying to get it finished before New Year’s Eve. Because that’s just how I roll in the Shire.